DorkbotPDX people doing strange things with electricity

I'm playing with a FPGA starter kit board and decided to blog about my learning process. I got the board from Jared at Sharebrained, thanks! The board I have is a Spartan-3 Board from Digilient. It has a Xilinx FPGA on it. It also came with a JTAG-USB cable which could end up be useful with other projects?

First step is to get a dev environment set up so I can upload example code.

This is a quick reminder to get your project proposal in for the On Gallery Show! Idea submission is due on the 15th. Sometimes it's good to have an external deadline to push your projects forward quicker! ;)

You can add messages here.

I've been playing around with solenoids and relays this weekend. Here's a relay I got from Surplus Gizmos being controlled by an Arduino.

I've been attempting to help (or maybe hinder!) Don with a project he's working on. My task is to get a Dorkboard and eventually just the Benito talking to this Nordic nRF2401A breakout board from Sparkfun. After hacking on it a for a few days and today at the Open Lab and even more hacking at home I finally have the example program working! I'm attaching the source for the Arduino sketch for anyone else trying to do the same thing.